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Doris Roberts: 13 Facts About the ‘Everybody Loves Raymond’ Star

Check out the sometimes rocky road that led the actress to become the mother of all TV mothers

When it comes to mothers on TV sitcoms, nobody did it better than Doris Roberts, who portrayed them a number of times, but never as effectively as Everybody Loves Raymond’s Marie Barone. Here she was at 5′ 1″ tall, a little dynamo who, when she chose to use her gifts of guilt or anger, intimidated the other members of her family, including 6′ 8″ son Robert.

The power that emanated from Doris Roberts — despite the fact it was played on the show for comedy — was actually reflective and a result of the journey she took in life. Born on November 4, 1925 in St. Louis, Missouri, she had (justifiably) “daddy issues” due to the fact her father abandoned she and her mother when she was a child; she fought like hell to establish herself as an actress — a marriage coming together and falling apart in the process — and began eeking out roles on Broadway and in television guest appearances, before scoring some film roles.

Her credits are extensive, though there were only a handful of TV shows that she was a regular cast member on, including Angie (1979 to 1980), Maggie (1981), Remington Steele (1983 to 1987) and, of course, Everybody Loves Raymond (1996 to 2005), not to mention all of the recurring roles she portrayed as well.

Doris Roberts with her Emmy Award

Over the course of a career that began in 1951 and went until 2015, she won five Emmy Awards and One Screen Actor’s Guild award. Beyond that, Doris Roberts was an animal rights advocate, working with Puppies Behind Bars, a program that allows prison inmates to train dogs for the elderly and physically disabled; and she was Chairman of the Children with AIDS Foundation.

Presumably you didn’t know a number of those facts about Doris Roberts, but there are even more to follow.

1. She was emotionally impacted by her father’s abandonment

When she was a child, Doris and her mother were abandoned by her father, and the impact on her emotionally was very strong. “For years,” she admitted, “I thought it was my fault. All little kids think divorce or desertion has to do with them. It took me years to let go of that; years not to expect any man I loved to ‘take a walk.’”

2. When she was four or five she was attracted to the idea of performing

As Doris told The Sela Enterprise, “I had one line in a play in kindergarten in which I said, ‘I am Patrick Patato and this is my cousin, Mrs. Tomato.’ There was laughter in the room and I loved the sound of that. It made me feel very important and that’s what I wanted to do from that moment.”

3. After getting married, she studied acting late each night

In 1956, Doris married Michael Cannata and they had a son named Michael, but her desire for a career definitely added some strain to their marriage. She detailed, “In the late ’50s and early ’60s, I couldn’t get arrested on or off Broadway, so I made work for myself. From midnight until 3 A.M., I studied at the Actor’s Studio in New York. Why at that hour? Because I couldn’t get my then-husband to babysit until then. And I needed to work for my sense of self. Even then it was hard to keep believing in my talent when I wasn’t getting paid for the work I did. Still, what I learned was priceless.”

 

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